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My Favourite View

My Favourite View

Ayaowre Stract

"My Favourite View" depicts me lying on top of one of the whiteboard/shelf structures that divide the cubicles in the honours room of the maths department at La Trobe. It was summer and I was doing my first research project (on quandles).
I'll probably never stop feeling amazed that I got this opportunity (as well as the opportunity to attend La Trobe to begin with). My ATAR was a nice solid 55.85, almost 10 points lower than the baseline of 65 to get into my course. It wasn't my intention when I took this picture, but I feel it quite aptly describes this amazement at getting to a place one would not have expected me to get to.
Just as many might fear being atop a shelf no wider than their body, many are anxious about being in a demanding university course or doing a research project on a topic they never heard of before and know nothing about. But what I feared wasn't falling, I felt my passion would carry me through; but that I'd be caught - that I shouldn't revel in being up there, and that I was looking down on those who aren't.
Studying pure maths feels like digging into the fundamental structures of all possible types of existence, and you run into results that defy your intuition. Realizing what's really possible is an awe-inspiring feeling. Like living on 7000$ a year including rent, other notions of size and distance that look weird but are amazingly consistent, and climbing the walls of your cubicle.